Yes I do think they find it easier. On departure when they may well be close to maxed out just with flying the aircraft they can see straight away when they are approaching circuit height without having to subtract 287 feet or whatever it is. Downwind it is the same, and when descending on base or final they have a ready reference to how they are getting on to compare with the sight picture.
In addition, once they start going to other airfields and they are used to being, say, 700ft at about 1.5 mile final then they will be able to use that at the new airfield easier than they would to do an unfamiliar conversion of 'altitude less airfield elevation'.
Anything which reduces the workload in those early stages is good news in my book. It is also a good method to reinforce basic altimetry teaching in setting QNH when departing the circuit and considering airspace etc (i.e. not climbing to the base of CAS only to find you're still on QFE and are 200ft+ inside CAS).